Successful Blog

Teams: How to Make Quality the Signal above the Time and Money Noise

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

10-Point Plan: Train Self-Managing Teams with an Outstanding Bias Toward Quality

Show Me in the Contract Where It Assures the Work Will Be Good

Spend enough time in business you hear the saying, “Fast, Quick, and Good, Can’t have all three!” or some version of it. In my business it was Quality, Schedule, Budget, Pick Two!”

I watched and wondered for years what made this algorithm work. Observation proves that without constant surveillance it consistently comes out the same.

Schedule and Budget win out over Quality.

Quality is hard to define, protect, and keep. It’s high touch, high concept, by it’s very nature qualitative and subject to discussion. Schedule and budget are right there, out loud, down on paper easy for everyone to measure and see.

In a business endeavor, every member of a team knows exactly how late, how much over budget some effort might be, but few can agree how much it has slipped on quality.

If we’re talking about products, it’s hard enough judge the quality gap — that’s the job of the product team.
But suppose we’re talking about quality leadership, quality thinking, quality communication, quality relationships, or living out a quality social media strategy?

How Do You Keep the Noise of Time and Money from Killing Quality?

Quality leadership does the quality thinking that forms the quality decisions. It’s quality communication that builds long-term quality relationships. That kind of quality is at the foundation of any team endeavor that succeeds. It’s also the at the core of any quality social media strategy.

Whether we’re talking to employees, customers, or volunteers, it’s important that we telegraph with every nuance of our brand that quality will always be the signal above the noise of time and money. Because quality is about them.

How do we build an outstanding bias toward quality into the fabric of our organization and our teams? Use the same steps we used to build a brand-values baseline and if you can, invite help from that same core team.

  • Start with the heroes and champions from the core team. Whenever change is the goal, look for the folks most predisposition to embrace the change and invite them first.
  • Put the problem before the change makers — about 12 people in three teams. When they have gathered first challenge the teams to define quality as a definition of thinking, leadership, communication, relationships, and process. Have them come to one definition for their team.
  • Ask that core group of change makers how to tackle the problem Ask them how to bring quality to be the highest signal above the noise on their team.
  • Listen and record their answers. Think of it as a list of possibilities, not necessarily a brainstorm, but more like an offer of possible tactics to try in their natural habitat.
  • Review the list and ask the group to sort it. Choose three categories. Possible categories might be leadership-based ideas, communication-based ideas and process-based ideas.
  • Ask each team to discuss one of the three lists they’ve made. Suggest that they discuss how well the idea might work over time with their coworkers, how it might need to be changed, and whether it needs outside input. Allow teams to add or remove ideas. Explain that they’re looking for one or more ideas that have merit — enough power and value that the team believes they could persuade others to put the idea into action.
  • Invite the teams back to the group to present the ideas that they believe have merit. Challenge the teams to persuade the rest of the room to take on their call to action.
  • Allow the listening teams to give their response and to offer their opinion on how easily they might be able to persuade others to join in to the proposed quality challenge. Work together to help reword and rework any that have value, but need a more powerful argument.
  • Decide on the most effective quality-enhancing changes that are most natural to the organization.
  • Build a strategy on how to introduce them to the larger group. Will it be peer-to-peer training? Will it be a meeting? Will it be a proof of concept that the small group tries and then demonstrates success?
  • Then, choose a way that everyone can measure the success of the attempt to change behavior to a more quality-based way of work. Set a date to meet again to report back, consider how things worked, and adjust the call to action or the process.

Research has proven we go where we look and we change what we measure. If we want our bias toward quality in thinking, leadership, communication, and relationships to grow, we have to look at, measure and talk about them in the same ways we do schedule and budget. If we want quality to be the signal above the noise, we have to invest our schedule and budget in making it so.

People look at what we do — not what we say — to know what we believe.

How do you prove to your employees, customers, and volunteers that quality is above the noise of time or money?

READ the Whole 10-Point Plan Series: On the Successful Series Page.

Be Irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Retweet or Race to the Finish: 3 Steps to Influencing Action

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Not Just a Call, but Real Action

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You want people to retweet you?

Whatever the action, a retweet, a call to arms, or a race to the finish, enlisting a folks to move in the same direction to follow our passionate action requires that we follow some simple acts of our own. Consider these three steps and and the following equation the next time you want to influence people move to act on your behalf.

The three steps to influencing action are simple, but also harder than they look:

  1. Give people a big reason — important, urgent, and about teamwork — filled with meaning that is bigger than helping you do what you want..
  2. Show them how fulfilling the mission will benefit them and make them proud to have been a part.

    Request for RT = benefits for Requestor and the requestor’s people.
    RT http://mysite.me because we need 100 fans to help our school.

    Request for RT = benefits the Retweeter and many other people.
    RT http://kidzrd.com/ & Get a thank you from a kid who’s learning to read & a link in Reading Heroes List

    Which request would be more likely to move you to action?

  3. Make it easy to be a part. Whatever the action, hoard the hard labor, and offer the hero parts.

As with any quest in which we want to move people to action …

The rules are fueled by the spirit of leadership — the belief that we can build something important and urgent together that we can’t build alone. It’s our team on a relay race. It’s giving the reason that we want to run the race and are willing invest our best to go for the win.

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The math is simple.
Meaningful reason + proud feeling of sharing = a message that goes wide.

It doesn’t take training in calculus to work through this equation. It takes a true sense of humanity and human relationships. Any caring person can get to that.

What do you find is crucial to moving people to action in what you do ?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Listening for the Meaning

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Present Meaning

We spend so much time talking
about listening
that sometimes it seems that we don’t hear
the simplest sounds filled with meaning.

The sounds of cars on pavement
may not be the sounds of sleigh bells ringing
but they are the sounds of people moving.
Coming and going, spending time to reach a destination.

Do you listen for the people who could be coming to you?

The sounds of wrapping paper tearing
might not be the sounds of hearts opening
and exchanging joy, love, trust, and giving,
but inside the minds of those who tear away the ribbons
hearts are beating, memories are being forged and formed.

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Children are laughing, posing, playing and participating in the ways that only children do.

Do you listen for the good thoughts and feelings that people
say with their eyes, their hands, their time in bringing themselves to you?

Listening for meaning is an act of being present.
How lovely to just be present, listening to what it means to be with you.

May all your presents be meaningful, deep, and true.

Thank you for the meaning you’ve given to what I do.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Optimal Elements: Two Column Blogs

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A Guest Post by Louise Baker

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Let’s face it – there’s no aspect about your blog that is more important in the long run than its design. No matter how good your content, no one is going to want to read your blog if they can’t get past the design. As blogging becomes more mainstream and advanced, design elements are becoming more and more flexible, allowing people to do whatever their imagination desires in terms of their blogs’ layout. Unfortunately, this has led many bloggers taking the route of overcrowding their design. Two column blogs are considered to be the most streamlined and clean type of design, and there are many tweaks that can be made in order to optimize this layout.

Designing a two column blog is all about working as clean as possible. Blogs are like periodicals, and the idea behind this realm of design is to make the content as attractive looking and easy as possible to read, so as not to alienate any visitors. Since two column blogs are somewhat minimalist compared to 3 column blogs, you have a much larger area to work with regarding content. This will allow you to mess with font sizes and photo layouts until you come up with what you feel works best. Finalizing a design is all about trial and error, and often comes down to personal opinion. Regardless, it helps to have a few associates or friends critique your layout.

Since two column layouts tend to have less sidebar room than other types of layouts, the framework itself forces you to be minimalist, which is a good thing. Instead of crowding your sidebars with widgets, comments and the like, make an effort to design them to be as clean as possible. There are other areas on your blog that you can sneak in a few widgets, but you should strive to keep your sidebars clean.

Remember that the most important part of your blog is the content, but the design will determine how the content is viewed. Choose fonts, sizes and other variables that really seem to stand out to the reader. The design is not meant to be focused on. In fact, its main goal is to let the content shine while helping out backstage. If your design is clean, your content will pop. Take this into consideration and your next blog will look clean and professional.

Here’s an example of a clean, well-designed two column blog.
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Louise Baker ranks online degrees for Zen College Life. She most recently wrote about the best colleges online.

Thanks, Louise. A clear path to information is so important to online learning sites.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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How will you thrive?

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by Patty Azzarello

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Give yourself this gift.

Think about what you love and hate about your job.

Think about the times in your career and your life when you were thriving. You were doing great work, it felt great and the crowds were cheering.

Now think about the people and irritants that drain your energy. What do you dread about your job?

Come up with a plan. Decide how you can change or re-define the interactions in your day to be better for you.

Re-write the drama

Fire the writers who put you in annoying situations. Re-write the screen-play for the time you spend at work.

Identify the type of work that makes you feel great and take on more of it. Create a strategy to defend against, eliminate, or change the things that drain your energy.

This is not selfish. If you focus on doing things specifically to make yourself thrive at work, you will find that you will become even better at your job, have more to offer your team, and you will deliver more value to your company. And you’ll be happier.

Have a Wonderful Holiday!

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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The Short Post Vs. The Long Post. Who Will Be Victor?

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By Terez Howard

I was recently interviewed about blogging, and one question I was asked was how many words a post should be. I will admit that when I first started blogging, word count was an issue for me. I would deliberate over posts not being long enough and think that if a post were too long, my audience would quickly stop reading it.

It’s funny. When I first started working at the newspaper, I was worried about word count. I had come from college. In English class, the instructor tells you to write x amount of pages. If you don’t, expect a lower score. Well, it’s not like that at the newspaper.

You are not going to get a lower paycheck if your articles are not at least 500 words. I learned very quickly that everyone wrote differently. Each writer highlighted different aspects of a meeting or event. Every person created an article that would interest readers. Whether it filled just one column or several, it still was news. It was written well, and that was enough.

Blogging for who?

If your blog is a personal project that isn’t meant to benefit anyone but yourself, write however much or little as you want. It’s for you!

If your blog is directed toward a particular crowd, then you need to ask yourself this question:

Does your audience favor longer posts or shorter ones?

ViperChill wrote This Is How Long Your Posts Should Be. Different blogs were different lengths. Variances were from less than 200 words to nearly 1500 words. Your blog’s niche can help you to see what kind of word count your audience is looking for.

But that is not the only thing that determines how long your posts will be.

Blogging for who, again?

What about you? You are the one doing the writing. Are you naturally a long-winded person, or do you get your point across in a few short paragraphs? Do you feel the need to explain every little detail, or do you favor short, informative lists?

Your own writing style comes into play when you’re deciding if you should write short posts or long ones. You have to allow your personality to shine because if you force yourself to follow rigid rules, your blog will suffer. You will find writing more of a chore than a joy.

Personally, I am a succinct person. I like to write what I think I need and stop. I hate to feel like I’m babbling. On the other hand, I’ve read plenty of long posts that have had me captivated to the very last period. On my blog, Jael Strong and I purposely mix short posts and longer ones. We do what we need to get the job done.

Just write!

Don’t get too hung up on word count. It really should not be too high your priority list. The most important aspect of your blog should be original, quality content. Short vs. long? I deem it a tie.

Do you tend to write short posts or long ones, and why?

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Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility. She has written informative pieces for newspapers, online magazines and blogs, both big and small. She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas. You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger.

Thanks, Terez!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!